Today I read a pro-death penalty argument that sentencing prisoners to life without parole puts guards (and other inmates) at risk, because the inmate has nothing to lose. Are there any facts to back this up? Is a prisoner with no hope of parole more like to kill or injure a guard than one who will possibly get out one day?
Isn’t there a famous case where this happened:
As far as I can tell from the Wiki, he was serving a 15-year sentence at the time. I’m looking for some statistics that would show there’s an increased risk (or not) from inmates with no hope of getting out compared to those who will be released sometime.
Getting out of jail isn’t the only thing a prisoner can look forward to. Prison life for a problem inmate can be made much harder by the administration. Violent prisoners will likely be locked in a segregation unit for 23.5 hours a day. Well-behaved prisoners will have less restrictions and more access to resources.
A prisoner who assaults guards will be dealt with in uncomfortable ways even if their sentence cannot be extended. If he keeps assaulting, he will be segregated away where he cannot harm guards or inmates. So you’re not going to have lifers going on killing sprees for their whole sentence.
I can’t provide you stats, but Silverstein was serving 2 life sentences both for murders committed since being incarcerated (and had also been convicted of another prison murder prior to this, but the conviction was overturned on appeal).
Obviously this is more of an illustration of what happens when a prisoner with no hope of parole kills. That said it’s also quite a sad indictment of the US prison system, i.e. someone going to prison as a fairly smalltime criminal and ending up with 4 seperate murder convictions whislt in prison (even if one was overturned).
I think it’s more of an illustration of this particular person. When he killed the first person (at least) in prison, he wasn’t serving a life term yet. The guy has issues way beyond considering the consequences of his actions.
But I do thank you for the reference, it’s still useful information.
Don’t know about “more likely”, but for those injured or killed by inmates convicted of murder but serving life sentences (or less) instead of being executed, it doesn’t really matter.
I don’t see any handy references online to determine what percentage of corrections employees and inmates were injured or killed by inmates doing life sentences with little to no hope of parole. There are some illustrative cases though, including that of Darla Lathrem, a Florida corrections officer sledgehammered to death by a member of a prison work crew she was supervising (an inmate who refused to go along with the escape attempt was also murdered).
“In discussing the plan with other inmates, Smith bragged that he would kill any correctional officer guarding them and that he would be famous for doing so. Smith also preferred to escape when a female officer was supervising the crew so that he could rape her…On 06/11/03, Smith, Eaglin, and Jones were working a construction detail that occasionally worked in the evening. Because these evening crews were composed of only five or six individuals, only one guard was assigned to supervise…Just after the head count, Eaglin beat up inmate Charles Fuston and locked him in a cell. Eaglin then returned with a sledgehammer and beat him to death. Fuston knew of the escape plan and had decided against it…Eaglin struck (Officer Lathram) twice in the head with a sledgehammer…Officer Lathram’s body was found in the locked mop closet, the sledgehammer on the floor beside her. The officers also discovered the other two inmates of the work detail, one of whom was injured, and Fuston, who was found dead in a locked cell.”
Smith was doing seven consecutive life sentences for first-degree murder, rape and armed burglary at the time of the murders (his rap sheet is impressive).
Not that working at or doing time in prison with dangerous inmates in a death penalty state is terrifically safe, but imagine doing so with no death penalty and inmates who are willing to risk punitive conditions in order to murder others for advantages like building a big reputation among other convicts (or just because they’re sociopaths who like killing).
Also, there is not “nothing to lose.” Start keeping your nose clean and maybe in 30 years the governor will see fit to commute your sentence or grant you a pardon.
These LWOP sentences are relatively new and it is yet to be seen if society will throw a 17 year old in jail and keep him there when he is 95. It sounds good in theory, but it hasn’t been tested yet.
One such threatened incident:
After this incident, Ressler actually mandated that no FBI agent conduct an interview alone with a serial killer, and later extended the mandate to prisoners who commit serial sexual crimes. They are just too damn manipulative.
I’m testing it now, m’kay? Got a kid who was admitted a while back, age 18, with a 124 year sentence.
I thought of that incident when I started reading the thread.
Ressler interviewed Kemper in prison without a guard present, based on two prior interviews where he thought they’d achieved a rapport. Seems a bit reckless to me, considering Kemper was 6’9 and weighed over 300 pounds, and had previously murdered 10 people. But he apparently could be quite charming, according to one of Ressler’s colleagues:
"Douglas admitted that he had liked Ed. “He was friendly, open, sensitive, and had a good sense of humor.” 
Anecdotes aren’t data, I know, but Scott Turow, in his excellent nonfiction book Ultimate Punishment (which thoroughly and even-handedly reviews all the arguments for and against capital punishment) tells about a very, very bad Illinois lifer who killed a guard.
Define “relatively new” - in Spain they got taken off the books in the 1970s.
Hijack, but: what kind of stupid argument for death penalty is that? I’ve always encountered this fact (based on statistics, but not limited to attack on guards) as argument against life-long prison sentences, when comparing the US model of prisons as revenge, that is, treating prisoners cruelly, with the European/Scandinavian approach of prison as rehabiliation, that is, treating prisoners decently.
I don’t get what your argument is. Could you elaborate on the differences between the U.S. prison system and the European/Scandinavian model? (I’m not sure it’s fair to lump the Scandinavian model in with Europe as a whole.) According to one article I read, the maximum sentence that anyone can serve in Norway is 21 years. I’m all for treating inmates decently. I don’t know if the Scandinavian model would work for the United States though. In fact, I don’t think it would. If people like Anders Behring Breivik could only serve a maximum of 21 years in prison in the United States I think we’d just start lynching people.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to hijack the thread and I apologize. I also want to be clear that I don’t believe we should be cruel to prisoners no matter how heinous their crimes.
Basically, the US prison system is based on the cultural thinking of revenge - “let’s punish those bastards! That will learn them!”, which is also deeply rooted in other parts of US culture (the authoritarian approch to education, including spanking for example).
The European approach (I’m lumping the scandinavian ones because they’re used as examples in the articles comparing the two system, but also other systems e.g. the German one, which was reformed in the 60s/70s when it was realized that brutalizing prisoners works adversly to re-integrating them, but excluding some like France which still have an archaic system) is to treat prisoners decently, including laws: no three-strikes-law or multiple sentences (and no death penalty, period). Because the point is rehabilitation, imprisioning somebody for life doesn’t achieve that goal, and studies show that people’s psychology breaks after too long negativly instead of becoming a better person.
It also means that wardens aren’t bullies from the street, but get long training and that prison gangs, rape etc. are stopped by the guards instead of letting them happen because “eh, they’re all bad”.
There are several oft-quoted newspaper articles about those two prison systems.
The system would certainly work in the US because local experiments have shown that - surprise, surprise! - treat people like scum, and they act like scum, but treat people like decent human beings, and they will act like decent human beings. It’s basic psychology, and it’s not factually proven that American criminals are by default so much more degraded than their European counterparts.
However, such a move would be hugely unpopular with conservative Politicans and their populist voters. Also, lowering crime rates in general requires more than “just” prison reforms: it would need an overhaul of the laws (esp. against drugs) to get rid of unequal sentencing; not a “war”, but a sensible, multi-pronged approach against poverty to offer alternatives to the criminal lifestyle; and a change in general attitude away from revenge and authoritarianism. Yes, that’s a big shift on many issues, but the result would be a better life for criminals and non-criminals alike.
I don’t know anything about the European system, but this was my first thought. It’s an argument against life without parole. Making it into an argument in favor of the death penalty is wishful thinking on someone’s part.
One could argue just as easily that people under a death penalty will resort to killing because they have nothing to lose either.
In the absence of actual facts either one is just as plausible.
The usual argument from the pro-death-penalty crowd is that people sentenced to death shoud be executed quickly and it’s only those softie liberals tying things up with appeals that result in people sitting on death row for years.
That a lot of cases are overturned, and that things like the justice project have shown that today more care for due process goes into capital punishment cases (so there’s less possibility for appeal) than into “normal” life sentence cases, meaning that far more innocent people are now condemned to long life sentences than before with death penalty should be worrying to people concerned about justice and an argument against both.
There are plenty of statistics for the US comparing states with long life without parole to life with parole (and lesser sentences for other crimes with and without parole, too), as well as comparing states with death penalty and without.
But what have facts do to with pro-death-penalty?
It’s a difficult hypothesis to test. You can’t just compare the number of death row prisoners who have committed murder in prison with the number of non-death row prisoners who have committed murder in prison. Because people don’t just happen to end up in death row - they got there by having an extremely violent history. So death row prisoners might commit more murders in prison but it isn’t a cause and effect relationship. It’s that being on death row and committing murder in prison are both separate effects of the common cause of being a violent criminal.
um why would this be difficult? You have the data of previous convictions as well as the crime that the current sentence is for all prisoners (and no privacy rights) so what prevents you from grouping “criminals sentenced for life because of murder with parole AND at least 3 past convictions of violence AND at least 1 warning b/c of violence while in prison” with “same as above but life without parole”?